http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/04/opinion/brooks-in-defense-of-romney.html?_r=1&ref=opinion
Here is David Brooks in his October 4th 2011 column in the New York Times endorsing the candidature of Mitt Romney for the Republican Party. Mr. Brooks is not given to momentary political infatuations that lead nowhere. He is more empirically based, once he leaves his habitual abode of Platonic Ideas. Mr. Romney may not create great excitement or win immediate affection but he is competent, at least in the estimation of Mr. Brooks. He does supply a short list of Mr. Romney’s advisers, of whom our writer thinks highly:
R. Glenn Hubbard of Columbia University, a supply side economist associated with the American Enterprise Institute.
Greg Mankiw of Harvard University, a Neo-Keynesian Economist associated with The American Enterprise Institute
Jim Talent former Senator, Conservative Republican associated with the Heritage Foundation
Vin Weber former Republican Congressman, member of PNAC and associated with the National Endowment for Democracy
One can only be impressed with the respectable, establishment Republican Party credentials that this list embodies. But in today’s ideologically overheated political environment, in which the Tea Party seems to be in ascendancy, in policy terms within the Party, will these advisers and their advice, be enough to rouse the more radical fringe to an enthusiastic level of support at the voting booth? Two stumbling blocks exist for the nomination of Mr. Romney: his support and passage of healthcare in Massachusetts and his Mormon religion. On his web site Mr. Romney makes clear his opposition to Obama care, couched within ‘States Rights’ rhetoric, but the site is filled with election year platitudes and bromides, the usual public relations language. The question of how Mr. Romney will overcome the deep prejudices of Fundamentalist Christians, who regard Mormonism as a ‘cult’ is not even addressed by Mr. Brooks. Perhaps, Mr. Brooks identifies this issue as unimportant or, even, too volatile for enunciation to his partisan readers, who look to him as the voice of a reasoned Conservatism: outside of the realm of more radical iterations of Conservatism that the Fundamentalist and Tea Party represent.
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